Witnesses
by Lou Storgaard
Summary: Stella is home alone with her children when she loses sight of them, just for a few minutes but something happens that could change everything. One-shot. Mac/Stella Family.


**Here's the second One-shot in my own little project. Very late I have to admit, but I've been having some issues. **

**Please let me know what you think.**

**Special Thanks to LilyMoonlight for helping me with this one.**

**Lou.**

"Nicki, Jason. Dinner!" Stella called out through the apartment, well aware that the two stubborn 7-year-olds would be sulking through the entire meal. They had been fighting without a break since their dad left for DC to testify 2 days earlier. It had simply gotten enough and they had been sent to their rooms to cool off.

The twins walked into the room , neither of them sparing their mother as much as a look as they sat down at the table.

Not in the mood for another conflict, Stella simply served their food with a sigh, finding comfort in the fact that Mac would be home sometime that night, or very early morning. It wasn't that she didn't love her children, but it was nothing short of exhausting how their respect for her seemed to gradually fade the longer their father was out of town.

Most of the meal went without problems, until Jason got bored. Stella had been lost in thought so it had been too late by the time she saw her son using his fork to flick one of his hated vegetables at his sister, who immediately reacted, before long it had turned into a full-blown push and shove fight.

"That's enough." She told them firmly. "Sit down and finish your dinner."

"He started it." Nicki whined sporting an offended pout as she pointed at her brother, who immediately shook his head. It didn't take more than half a minute before they were clawing at each other again, for the umpteenth time that day.

"Stop it you two. Go to your rooms and cool off." Stella demanded.

"But I'm hungry!" Nicki complained, Jason suddenly agreeing with his sister.

"You should have thought about that." They were just told, even though Stella knew very well that she would end up bringing in some food to their rooms when she'd had a chance to clear her head.

"Not fair!" Jason grumbled as he stomped off towards his room. Nicki stayed behind for a few seconds, glaring at her mother angrily before storming down the hallway after her brother.

Stella was left sitting at the table with her head propped up on her hand, sighing heavily as she once again promised herself she would change this pattern of always arguing with the children when she was home alone with them.

Since she had suddenly lost her appetite, she decided she might as well get the dishes done. Hopefully she'd have managed to cool off, herself once she was done.

She knew that it was probably her own fault they didn't listen to her when Mac wasn't home. She had always spoiled them whenever she could get away with it, letting them have things their way. It had been like that till they were almost 5.

It didn't take her long to finish up and arrange two plates with leftovers for the twins. She didn't have the heart to actually let them go to bed hungry.

Before she could take the food to their rooms, she heard hesitant footsteps behind her. Turning around she saw Nicki lingering just outside the kitchen door, not quite sure she was allowed to enter.

"Hi Honey." Stella said with a smile.

"I'm sorry Mommy." The little girl mumbled, looking at her feet.

"It's okay. As long as it doesn't happen again." Stella told her, reaching her hand out for her daughter, who instantly rushed over and clung to her mother's side.

"I promise." She assured, even though Stella knew it would happen again. Siblings fight, that was just how things were.

"Come on, lets go get your brother, then you can have your dinner."

"Can we still go on our walk?" Nicki asked shyly as they headed for Jason's room together.

"Sure."

It didn't take them more than half an hour before they were walking along their street, enjoying the chill air. The twins were talking about their day at school and Stella was happy to listen.

Jason was telling her how they had been racing in gym, and he had been running much faster than the other boys.

When Stella told him that was really great, he straightened his back in pride over his own achievement.

"I bet I can run faster!" Nicki claimed cockily, her attitude daring her brother to get mad at her.

"Prove it!" Jason almost yelled back at her as he had already started running.

"Stop at the corner!" Stella yelled after them as she set into a jog after the two children sprinting down the sidewalk.

By the time Jason reached the corner, Nicki had already caught up with him, and calling it a draw, when racing his sister wasn't an option.

Stella sped up her pace to reach them as Nicki followed her stubborn brother around the corner. Yelling at him that mommy said only to the corner.

When Stella finally reached the corner the twins were still several feet ahead of her. Jason was still trying to outrun his sister who was close on his heels.

Stella's heart stilled as Jason took a left turn right onto the street. A very angry cab-driver managed to stop just 2 feet from the children as they ran ahead, not giving much thought to the traffic.

"Jason! Nicki! Don't go any further!" she tried yelling after them even though she had already lost sight of them again. New York drivers didn't stop to think that when two 7 year-olds ran across the street, their mother probably wasn't far behind.

Instead she was on the opposite side of the road, looking desperately for a hole in traffic, while her children was running around somewhere just out of her reach.

"Come on. Come on!" She yelled anxiously, needing some sort of outlet for the flood of mixed emotions. Fear and anger being the two most vivid ones in that moment. Fear for her children, anger towards god and everybody, including herself. _Especially _herself.

Finally spotting a break between cars that appeared long enough for her to cross the street she sprinted out onto the asphalt, praying that the twins had listened and stayed on the sidewalk right on the other side.

"Damn it!" She growled as she reached the sidewalk, her children nowhere in sight.

"Nicole! Jason!" She just about screamed as she ran down the sidewalk, hoping she was going in the right direction. If they got lost in New York, no one knows what could happen to them.

That kid from Danny's building, Ruben, had only been around the corner from Danny when he was shot. She shuddered at the thought, that wasn't going to happen to them, it simply wasn't. She was going to kill someone, anyone, if anything happened to her children.

What seemed like several minutes later, but in reality was no more than a few seconds, she discovered that she hadn't needed to have worried so much, as her two children came running towards her, screaming 'mommy' as they spotted her on the sidewalk.

Even though it hadn't been long since they got away from her, seeing them come towards her like that really was a sight for gods. It could only take too long before they reached her, but the second she had them both in her arms safely the relief overwhelmed her. He precious, wonderful children could have gotten awfully hurt but they didn't, they were back safe.

Hours later it had become clear to Stella that something had happened while the children were on their own. They were so quiet, so scared. At first she had thought they were mad at her, because of the lecture about never going out into the street on their own like that she had given them when they returned home, but the way they had been constantly clinging to her all night told her otherwise.

She had tried to get them to open up to her, tell her what had happened, but neither of them were willing to let her in. Something had scared them badly.

They were all lying on her bed. The children sound asleep on each side of her, she couldn't sleep however. She had spent most of the night scolding herself for not looking after them. At the same time the fear of what exactly had happened had her completely lost, making it a constant fight to hold the tears at bay. She couldn't handle the fact that something indeed had happened in the short 10 minutes she hadn't been paying attention.

Pushing herself out of bed, careful not to wake up the children, she decided it would probably be better to just get up and wait for Mac, who could be home any second, rather than stay in bed with all the terrifying thoughts of what the children could be hiding.

After a small detour into the kitchen where she made herself a calming cup of tea she was soon seated on the couch, with her knees drawn up. She was still sitting there when her husband came home a little while later.

She watched him as he put down his suitcase and hung his coat in the closet. He didn't seem to have noticed her yet, but his presence alone seemed to calm her overly worried mind.

"Hey." He simply said as he saw her, a slight smile on his face. "What are you still doing up?"

She couldn't offer him more than a shrug, she didn't really know why she was up. Too guilty to fall asleep she assumed.

Dropping into the couch, Mac greeted his wife with a soft kiss before continuing their conversation.

"You've been crying." He stated gently, his arm wrapping around her slender waist.

"The twins got away from me, Mac. When we were out for our walk. They were just supposed to race each other to the corner." She explained with a sigh. "They ran onto the road! Then they were just gone. Now they will barely even talk to me."

"It's not your fault, children get carried away when they play." He soothed.

"Why are you this perfect? I would've screamed at you like crazy if you'd lost the kids for half a day." Stella informed him.

"It was what? 5-10 minutes tops?" He pointed out, making her smile ever so slightly before trying to force a serious expression back on her face.

"I still would've yelled at you."

"I come home, find my wife in tears, and you expect me to yell at you?" He asked her seriously, before he continued. "Stella – Honey. I love you, but sometimes you're just too hard on yourself. I'd be worried too, but they're home and they're safe."

"Yea, you're probably right. I just cant get over the fact that they could've easily gotten killed running out in front of a cab like that." She said as Mac gently turned her head towards him, kissed her forehead.

"But they didn't." He whispered against her skin, letting his hand rest by her cheek.

"Thank god." She sighed, before clearing her throat. "So, how was DC?"

"Boring, I missed the kids." He told her with the hint of a smile on his face. One that made her melt.

"Why thank you." She complained with a mock-pout that in turn made him melt.

"I missed you the most." He told her, his fingers tickling her sensitive sides.

"Flirt."

Dropping the kids of at school the next morning had been hard on Stella, but she had to. She had spent most of her morning trying to get Mac to understand why she wanted to take a day off and spent some time with the children. Just the 4 of them together.

He kept trying to convince her that sending them to school would be perfectly safe. He didn't understand that she believed there was more to it than just the children getting lost for a few minutes.

In the end, he had been saved by the bell, or rather by their pagers going off near simultaneously, sending them to two different crimescenes. Hers only a few blocks from their home.

"The vic is a CI, his name is Reggie Till." Don told her, snapping her out of her thoughtfulness. "Worked with me a couple of times."

"Confidential informant? What's he doing in this neighborhood?" She asked, already busy getting an overview of the scene.

"I have no idea. Could be working for another cop? A lot of cops live in this neighborhood. Wouldn't put it past this guy."

"Maybe someone saw through him? He went here to hide? It isn't exactly the first place people would like for a guy like him." She added in before grabbing her camera, wanting nothing more than to this day over with so she could get home to her family.

She had barely started taking photos when her phone rang. It soon turned out to be Nicki's teacher. At first what she said didn't get through to Stella, but the fears from the night before soon returned full force.

"I've got to go." she simply told Don. "Call Hawkes, he's on secondary."

She had barely turned away from the scene before she'd dialed Mac's number, several terrifying images flying through her head as she waited for him to pick up.

"Taylor?"

"Mac, Nicki's teacher just called me, some guy was sneaking around by the schoolyard fence, talking to Nicki." She started in a rush, going on to explain how whatever this guy had said had made Nicki run screaming back into the school. "I'm picking both of them up."

"Honey take a breath. I'm sure Nicki is just fine." Mac tried to assure her, but it didn't do much to calm her heart, which was currently pounding so hard it felt like her chest would explode any second. She wasn't going to step down on this one. She had a horrible gut feeling, and if there was something she'd learned over the years, was that her gut-feeling was rarely wrong.

Both Nicki and Jason had been surprised to be picked up from school in the middle of the day, but neither had complained, they had simply grabbed their bag and been ready to go. Nicki in particular, had been more than ready to go with her mom.

They had spent the afternoon together, just the tree of them. Just hanging around the house, enjoying the quiet comfortable atmosphere that had somewhat replaced the tenseness that had surrounded Stella since the night before.

She was finishing cleaning up the dishes that night, a relieved smile on her face. Things had somewhat returned to normal, even though the twins were still a lot quieter than usual. They sat in the living room, watching a movie with their dad. Their quiet conversation and occasional laughter reached the kitchen and offered a nice distraction from the still gnawing concerns.

She and Mac had tried to get the children to talk about what had or hadn't happened, but they still couldn't get them to say anything about it. That was disturbing in itself, they had both, especially Jason, inherited their mother's talkative gene.

After putting the last plate in the cupboard, she decided to go join her family in the living room, maybe a quiet family-night was all she needed to relax. It was probably just the guilt of having made her children run away even just for 10 minutes, that was bothering her.

"Where's Nicki?" She had to ask as she walked in to the livingroom to see her boys both sitting on the floor in front of the TV, Jason's nose almost glued to the screen.

"In her room, playing." Mac told his wife, he was starting to get worried about their children as well. Even though his rational self tried to tell him that it was limited just how much could happen to them during the 10 minutes they were on their own.

"I'll go check on her." She said, but the two guys were already focused on their movie again, so she just walked down the hallway . If it hadn't been for the bedroom door standing ajar, she wouldn't have noticed the sound of her daughter's soft sigh from behind the door.

She managed to sneak into the room unseen by the little girl, who was very aware that she wasn't supposed to be doing what she currently was doing. Still the sight of little Nicki trying on her mother's wedding dress was just too adorable for Stella to be mad.

Instead she simply cleared her throat, and couldn't help but chuckle as Nicki jumped, a guilty expression covering her face as she realized she'd been caught.

"What are you doing?" Stella asked as she joined her daughter, lifted her up onto a chair so that the dress wouldn't drag across the floor.

"I'm not pretty like you." The little girl sighed sadly, looking at her reflection with a disappointed frown. One that matched her father's perfectly.

"Of course you are honey." Stella told her with a smile, as she lifted the dress over her daughters head and placed it neatly on the hanger. "But you're only 7, and 7 year old girls aren't supposed to fit into a wedding dress. 7 year old girls are cute, and supposed to run around and play and get messy, but you know what they have to do also?"

"What mommy?"

"They are supposed to get tickled by their mommy." Stella told her , a smile slowly growing on her face as Nicki's eyes lit up.

"Noo Mommy!" She squealed as she was grabbed and pushed onto the bed, squirming and laughing at Stella's gentle tickle-attack. This was the girl Stella knew, and she was more than happy to have her back.

They continued their game for another few minutes before Nicki sat up abruptly, looking at her mother with big frightened eyes.

"I can never be a princess bride." She sniffled as she looked at the gorgeous dress hanging from the closet-door.

"Why not honey?"

"Coz I'll be dead." The little girl whispered as tears flowed freely down her cheeks, shattering her mother's heart.

"Who gave you that idea?"

"Jason. He says they'll kill us too." She cried, looking at her hands. "Because we saw."

It suddenly felt like all air was sucked out of her, as she contemplated what her daughter had just told her. Just the fact that Jason would assume something like that was terrifying, but that it actually could be true made her physically sick. The thought that the guy outside the school actually could be aiming to hurt her children.

"Baby, no matter what happens, I will never let anything happen to you or your brother. _Never._" Stella told her, as she held her daughter in her arms, trying hard not to cry herself.

"Promise?" Nicki asked sweetly as she clung to her mom for dear life.

"You and your brother, and your father are my life. I will never let you get hurt." She promised, running her hand up and down her daughter's back, trying to comfort the terrified child.

"Can we sleep in your bed again tonight?" Nicki asked after several minutes, to which Stella could only nod.

Less than an hour later, the children were tugged in in their parent's bed, even though there weren't that much room for all of them.

"I'm telling you, she was terrified." Stella told her husband as she walked up behind him by the bathroom sink. "They saw something. I think it was murder. She told me she was afraid they'd kill them _too_. Maybe it's the CI-case I've been working."

She noted her husband's skeptical expression as she looked in the mirror, but she knew he was as worried as her.

In all honesty he was, he was just waiting for her to elaborate. After hearing about Nicki's confession, he didn't doubt that something had happened anymore.

"The scene is less then a 5 minute walk from here, and Sid fixed TOD right around the time the twins ran away."

"It does make sense." Mac admitted, even though the thought terrified him, the case was still open, and his children were witnesses. Witnesses of a murder that had been committed to keep the CI from ratting someone out, if his children could identify them... He really didn't want to think that thought through.

"Look, tomorrow I'll call Nicole's teacher, see if she cant describe the man that approached Nicole outside the schoolyard." Mac tried well aware that it wouldn't comfort either of them very much right now.

Stella just nodded numbly, fighting not to cry as she noticed Mac's use of their daughter's actual name, one they rarely ever used unless it was in some official capacity or they were either mad or worried.

Mac obviously noticed her fight as he turned around and wrapped his arms around her. Promised her everything would be alright.

Mac pushed himself out of bed, trying hard not to wake up his family, but Stella woke up despite the fact that she was sleeping on the far other side of the bed.

"Work?" She asked sleepily, Mac just nodded. He felt bad for having to leave, but they needed him on the CI-case.

"I'll be back soon." he promised, pressing a soft kiss to the back of her nose. "Go back to sleep."

"Be careful." She just mumbled before crawling back under the covers, not giving any thought to the fact that she would be home alone with her children if anything were to happen.

When she was cruelly torn from sleep not long later, she knew right away that it wasn't Mac coming home. A loud crash had sounded and it didn't take long for her brain to click in to work mode and alert her that someone had kicked down the door.

The twins had both woken up from the racket and were looking at her with anxious eyes, trusting their mother to protect them from harm.

"In here." She told them as she ushered them towards the bathroom, grabbing her gun in the progress, before telling the children to lock the door and not open it under any circumstances.

She was standing with her gun pointed at the door, ready to fight by the time the intruders made themselves known, 2 masked men appeared in the bedroom door within seconds. Only whatever reaction she had had ready was ripped apart as Nicki cried for her mommy in the bathroom. The distraction giving the intruders the opportunity to easily overpower her.

Before she knew it she was on the floor, the gun flying from her hand. She tried to reach the gun, but the second she used her arms to push herself up from the floor, a heel was stomped down between her shoulder-blades, forcing all air from her lungs as she was crushed back to the floor.

She kept up her struggles, she couldn't let these two men hurt her children. She had worked too damn hard to get a family, she wasn't about to let that go. One of the men was doing his best to keep her down, while the other was kicking at the bathroom door, trying to reach the two terrified children on the other side.

After what seemed like an eternity but in reality was no more than a few seconds, Stella managed to twist her body around, giving her the ability to smash her knee into her attacker's groin. His groan of pain telling her that now was probably her only shot.

She threw herself towards the gun, she barely had a chance to think about it before she had fired several shots in the direction of the man who had just now kicked the bathroom door open.

She only just saw him go down before the gun was kicked out of her hand, a jolt of pain shooting from her fingers and through her body as she looked up at the other intruder, standing over her with a gun pointed at her head.

By then she was nothing short of terrified, if she died there was no one to protect her children from this man, she couldn't let that happen.

Before she could even try to come up with a plan, he fell down on top of her, her panic had blocked out the sound of the gunshot, and she pushed the body of her in a state of fear.

Mac helped her up, but he barely had time to look at her before she stumbled towards the bathroom to get to her children. By the time he caught up with her she was sitting on the bathroom floor, the children both crying in her arms. It only took him seconds to drop down next to them and wrap his arms around his family as tightly as he could.

Mac was pacing the waiting room anxiously, it wasn't that he didn't know whether or not his wife would be okay, because she was physically fine. She was here just to be sure she was fine, and because she needed to be processed.

Regardless of the reason she was here, the waiting was torture. They had barely had a chance to talk after what happened, she had sat in the back of the car, staring out of the window, crying quietly as Don took them to the hospital.

"Mac." Don made his presence known, handing his colleague a cup of coffee. "I just got off the phone with IAB, they will investigate, but you are most likely in the clear. Adam processed the unknown female DNA sample found at the CI-murderscene, they were tears, DNA is a partial match to you and Stella."

"Nicole." Mac stated with a sigh, no wonder their children had been traumatized if they had witnessed a murder, and possibly known the killers had seen them.

"Yea. Stella really proved that maternal instincts isn't something to take likely." Don said thoughtfully, knowing that if anyone treasured their family, it was Stella.

"It isn't fair that she had to go through this again. Being trapped in her own home. Why the hell did I go to work?" Mac asked mainly to himself.

"Blaming yourself wont get you anywhere." Don told him with a shrug before turning his attention to down the hallway where Stella just then came walking out of one of the rooms.

"Just a couple of bruises and scrapes." She told her husband as he looked her over with worry evident in every one of his features.

"How about I drive you two to your hotel, Lindsay's waiting there with the twins. And you unwind with buckets of icecream or popcorn or whatever you do?" Don suggested a slight smile on his face as Stella awarded him a halfhearted smile.

But that was exactly what the family did. They spent the night in each other comforting presence, laughing and playing games, all enjoying that the reality of what had happened hadn't kicked in yet. The adults knew they were in for quite a fight, their family had a lot of healing to do, but the comfortable night in the family's embrace assured all of them that their family did indeed have the strength to move on from this.


End file.
